Thunder Road Published on June 12th, 1963 Photograph by Jimmy McCormack irishtimes.com/archive
SEVERE WEATHER conditions may well be a regular feature of Irish life in a future dominated by climate change: but they’ve also been a feature of winters – and indeed summers – past. The photograph shows a woman in an optimistically sleeveless summer dress being helped by two CIE busmen, all of them up to their knees in water, on the Stillorgan Road.
It’s June 1963, and as the afternoon rush-hour reaches its peak, Dublin is hit by the mother of all thunderstorms. Or, as the front-page story for Wednesday, June 12th puts it, “In the wake of the most damaging thunderstorms to have hit Dublin in years, floodwaters raged through the city suburbs last night, causing untold damage to property and threatening life in a residential area from Merrion gates to Stillorgan.”
During the height of the storm, a young man from Fairview, Kevin Baker, was thrown high into the air on Pearse Street as a blast of lightning hit the footpath where he walked. He was treated for burns and shock in St Patrick Dun’s hospital. In Kilmacud, a doctor was watching the floods from the apparent safety of his own home “when the swirling waters smashed down three neighbouring walls and swept five feet high, like a tidal wave, into his house”.
People were marooned in houses containing up to four feet of water; many more were stuck for hours in massive traffic-jams. "Motorists," the story explains, "had a nightmare time. The waters deepened without seeming to do so, and many drivers who thought it safe to take a chance regretted the impulse later." It wasn't all bad, mind you, if the smiles of the three people in the photograph are anything to go by. Still. Irish summers, eh? Makes the winter we've been having look like child's play. So far . . . Arminta Wallace
